2025 European Jiu-Jitsu IBJJF Championship

How Adam Wardzinski Funnels The Best In The World Into His Butterfly Guard

How Adam Wardzinski Funnels The Best In The World Into His Butterfly Guard

Adam Wardzinski has a reputation for his butterfly guard. So how do his world class opponents let him get there? We breakdown his system of attacks & baits.

Jan 21, 2025 by Corey Stockton
How Adam Wardzinski Funnels The Best In The World Into His Butterfly Guard

Adam Wardzinski is rightfully recognized as the best butterfly guard player in the modern era. When he gets his hooks in place, it is almost impossible for his opponent to resist being elevated and turned over.

If we jiu-jitsu fans understand this, Wardzinski's opposition certainly understands it too. Surely, the top-tier competitors in the heavyweight division have spent hours preparing for Wardzinski's hooks and elevations: analyzing tape, studying grip sequences, devising game plans to avoid and counter the Polish Prince's polished guard.

So how, match after match in his Cinderella story 2024 season, did the Checkmat representative use his butterfly guard to such great effect?

Wardzinski has a series of attacks that he uses once he's earned his hooks and his grips. He has a variety of sweeps to both directions and he has a serious triangle threat from his butterfly guard. What's more impressive, though, is the series of funnels he's developed to lead opponents into his butterfly game. Some of those funnels are small technical maneuvers, repositioning himself or his opponent to create the circumstances he needs to set up his hooks and grips. Others are more psychological, offering different threats to opponents who insist on resisting Wardzinski's A-game.

Far side sleeve grip

In the 90 minutes of footage that encompasses Wardzinski's 2024 campaign, there is one detail that acts as a technical constant. No, it's not the butterfly hook; it's the sleeve grip. Wardzinski primarily pulls to half guard, and he generally uses the half guard to set up his butterfly hooks. While on his back, whether in half guard, open guard, or scrambling defensively, Wardzinski's top priority seems to be controlling his opponent's far sleeve.

This grip prevents the cross face, and — in turn — stops his opponent from putting Wardzinski's back flat on the mat. It also feeds directly into many of his sweep finishes, including the elevator sweep and retreating foot sweep, as well as some of his more effective submission threats.

Grounding the knee

One of the most essential and effective elements in Wardzinski's method of forcing the butterfly guard is the way he uses his half guard and reverse De La Riva positions. Adam often pulls into one of these positions. Savvy opponents tend to keep their inside leg posted in this position, understanding that if they put the inside knee on the mat, Wardzinski will set his butterfly hook.

Wardzinski has developed a clever solution to this problem. From half guard or reverse De La Riva, while maintaining control of his opponent's far arm, Adam removes his top leg from the position, and crosses his instep against his opponent's instep. This allows him to push the top player's knee to the mat, while his bottom leg keeps the knee bent, and keeps it grounded on the mat so that Adam can begin to insert his butterfly hook.


This is often a back and forth battle; Wardzinski grounds his opponent's knee, and when they remove it from the mat, he resets and replaces the knee to the mat. He often spams this during a match, forcing his opponent to focus on this small battle for the entire bout, otherwise allow the butterfly hook.

Hopping backwards

Wardzinski's opponents may resist his efforts to ground their knees, keeping their weight and posture back, stacked over their shin so that he can't easily elevate it. When he encounters an opponent with tall posture, he often lifts his hips off the mat and jumps them backwards, resembling a short range collar drag. This movement brings his opponent's weight and shoulders forward, where he can continue attempting to ground the knee or enter into different phases of his game.


Knee lever / John Wayne

Once Wardzinski has successfully placed his opponent's knee on the mat, the top player often leans their bodyweight toward that knee, encumbering Adam's hook. With the top player's weight stacked over this leg, it can be challenging for Adam to elevate the opponent for a traditional butterfly sweep. His solution to this not only forces the top player to adjust, but also provides him an opportunity to advance his grip.


When Adam finds his opponent's weight is stacked on the inside leg, he lifts his hips and tilts in that direction, threatening a John Wayne sweep — also called a knee lever sweep. The attack is powerful enough to knock opponents over, but most of Adam's opposition compensates their weight in the other direction, conceding the space that Adam wants.

Wardzinski is opportunistic in these moments, using the top player's defensive reaction not only to place his butterfly hook, but also to attain his preferred over the shoulder belt grip. This grip gives Adam the leverage to pull his opponents forward and control their balance and posture.

Single Leg X

Once Adam has established his butterfly hook, his opponents often preempt his attacks by extending their outside leg, attempting to keep their hips level while keeping a sturdy base on the mat. His solution to this is simple. He pivots his hips underneath the extended leg, entering into the single leg X-guard or ashi garami, where he has become increasingly effective in wrestling up. If his opponent tries to back step out of the single leg X, he commonly resets his butterfly guard, often to the opposite side.


Retreating foot sweep and ankle pick

Adam doesn't only wrestle up from the single leg X position. In fact, some of his most impressive and successful sweeps in the 2024 season have been wrestle-ups from a particularly frustrating scenario for many butterfly players.

Most of Wardzinski's attacks rely on his opponent's weight coming forward, stacked over his hips. But what does he do against a retreating opponent?

After being harassed by Wardzinski's many threats from the butterfly, the top player may begin backing way, trying to elevate their hips and maintain standing posture. The moment this happens, Adam uses his reliable sleeve grip, punching it between his opponent's legs to follow his energy backwards. While the top player stumbles back, Adam drops his foot behind his opponent's tripping him.


In the event that the top player anticipates this and high steps the leg, Adam is ready with his free hand to trap the supporting ankle, converting the foot sweep attempt into an ankle pick.

When he has time to set this sweep up slowly, he'll often enter from shin on shin reaching behind his opponent's leg and latching on to the cross-side lapel. This anchors him to the attack.

Finishing

Belt grip hook sweep

Wardzinski's most dangerous sweep comes when he has a grip over the top of his opponent's shoulder, latching onto the belt. This grip allows Adam to draw the top player's shoulders forward, taking all of the weight out of their legs so that Adam can use the strength of his hips to turn his opponent's.


Hook sweep with post trip

If Adam has the belt grip, he doesn't take his focus off finishing the sweep. Even when his opponent is posting on the far leg or making space, leaving an avenue for single leg X-guard, Adam won't settle for a change of position. However, the top player's outside leg post presents a problem.

Adam's solution? Once he's elevated the top player to the breaking point, he reaches his bottom leg to his opponent's posting leg, tripping it in a a motion that resembles a scissor sweep.


Shin on shin butterfly sweep

Wardzinski only used this sweep once in his 2024 campaign, but it was a thing of beauty. After following his retreating opponent up, entering shin on shin and attaining a cross lapel grip, Adam attempted a retreating foot sweep. When the top player took a big back step and re-engaged forward, Adam maintained the shin-on-shin connection. Reaching his bottom leg out to trap the opponent's outside leg, he mimicked a butterfly hook with his shin to sweep his opponent over.


Triangle

In most cases, Wardzinski earns submissions from the top position, sweeping his opponent over then progressing to mount for a barrage of heavy attacks. However, if he catches his opponent reaching for the mat to defend a butterfly sweep in progress, he'll sometimes change course and attack the triangle.


Maintaining his belt grip, he swings his butterfly hook out from inside his opponent's hip and latches it behind the armpit, allowing him the mobility to retract his bottom leg around the posting arm and over the shoulder for the submission threat.

Tilt sweep and wrestle-ups from single leg X

Wardzinski has two common paths when he gets to the single leg X position. Against standing opponents, he often defaults to the basic tilt sweep, pivoting his hips hard toward the trapped leg. When his opponent keeps his base low, kneeling or sitting, Adam tends to wrestle up, and is quick to use his leg against the opponent's support leg, tripping to the front or back to finish the takedown.


Landing in the deep headquarters and the float pass

Regardless of which sweep he uses, Adam tends to finish the attack tight to his opponent. Often, he lands in mount. But even when he doesn't finish to a dominant position, he lands chest to chest in the halfguard or low headquarters position. Via heavy smashing pressure, as well as dynamic side to side knee cuts and float passes, Adam prefers to finish from the mount position, where he has a full arsenal of collar chokes and his sharp katagatame.

Wardzinski's breakout 2024 season

Wardzinski has been competing at black belt since late 2016. Although he hit a few major podiums in the late 2010s, he didn't earn hist first major title until the 2022 European Championships, where he won the heavyweight category. In 2023, he won the IBJJF Pans title with a breathtaking comeback performance, overcoming a nine point deficit against Fellipe Andrew. Still, he had never hit a podium in the World Championships at the black belt level.

In 2024, Wardzinski won his second European title, again defeating Fellipe Andrew, and went on to have a perfect performance at the World Championships, submitting each of his four opponents and becoming the first European male ever to win an IBJJF black belt world title. Later that year, he won IBJJF's The Crown in the heavyweight division, defeating five time world champion Gustavo Batista in the final.

He is registered to compete in the 2025 IBJJF European Championships in the heavyweight division, taking place this weekend in Lisbon, Portugal. Watch it live on FloGrappling.


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